A book reviewer for Just Erotic Romance Reviews called my novella, Secret Desires, “an orgasmic read” and rated it four and a half stars (out of five). Said the reviewer: “Secret Desires was not my normal cup of tea, but boy was this an orgasmic read! I do have a tendency to seek out ménage stories, but most don’t have the storyline to be believable or the characters simply aren’t honest enough. The characters in Secret Desires were spot-on in their perceptions, the dialogue was real, and the sex was dynamic! What more could a person ask for?”

Secret Desires is the story of Morgan and Jack. Both want more from their relationship, but each is afraid to tell the other one. When Morgan’s chronic tardiness drives Jack to brink of his patience, he spanks her, freeing both of them to express their secret desires.

Secret Desires is the second novella I’ve written. It’s available as a individual PDF download from Black Velvet Seductions or in the anthology, Spanked!, which also includes my first novella, Intimate Submission. Spanked! is available in ebook and paperback formats.

Today I’m guest blogging about how I got started writing spanking stories. Sometimes you never know what path your career will take! Join me today at Nice n Naughty and read a excerpt from Secret Desires, one of my stories in the anthology Spanked! Nice n Naughty is a group blog of erotic romance authors.

A big thank you to Paige Tyler (who also writes spanking stories) for setting up this guest blogging appearance.

Writers aren’t like normal people. Perhaps the hours in isolation at our computers makes us squirrelly, but we’re a little different. We come from diverse backgrounds and cultures, might be introverted or extroverted, may have started writing early in life or late in life, but we share a kinship with each other, and I think, certain traits.

Writers love words. We love the nuances of meaning, the way words look and sound. This may seem like an obvious no-brainer, but can you imagine a house builder loving bricks or two-by-fours?

We have imaginary friends. Writers daydream a lot, spend a lot of time in our heads, making up stories, conversing with imaginary people.

We hoard things. We squirrel away facts, scraps of paper with snippets of information, newspaper articles, impressions of people or places.

We deal in magic. We take something intangible—an idea—that exists only in our heads and weave an entire world around it to amuse and amaze others.

We are obsessed with or addicted to what we do. Writing isn’t always a choice, Grasshopper. We are compelled to write. We have a need to communicate that can only be satisfied by writing—putting thoughts to written words—as opposed to speaking or painting or composing music.

Writing is more discipline, than inspiration, but when we are writing from true inspiration there is no better feeling in the world and there is nothing that we would rather do in that moment than write. This is not a good time to interrupt us.

Whether we want to or not, we compare ourselves to other writers. We either think, “I can do that,” or “Damn, I wish I could do that.”

We love writing. Another seeming no-brainer, except that while we want to make a career or a living from writing, the fact is, we’d still write even if we never made a cent.

What does walking have to do with writing? For most authors and other people with sedentary jobs, nothing.

But it should.

When I’m on a roll and the words are flowing (or not flowing as it sometimes happens), I spend six to eight hours a day sitting at my computer. To do that day after day, is not a healthy lifestyle.

So I walk.

Every day, rain or shine, I log 10,000 steps or 4.25 miles. Every day.

I get about half that amount just doing my daily business: getting the newspaper, checking the mail, letting the cats in, letting the cats out, grocery shopping, vacuuming, etc. The other 5,000 steps or roughly two miles I get by applying my feet to pavement as I walk around my neighborhood.

I keep track of my steps with a pedometer. I put it on as soon as I get up in the morning. Beyond measuring how much and how far I walk, a pedometer provides a great gauge of how much I move around in general. I think of it this way: I walk at a moderately fast pace. It’s not an oh-no-I’m-going-to-miss-my-plane sprint, but I don’t dawdle. Walking 10,000 steps all at once would take me about an hour and twenty minutes.

So basically, in any 24-hour period, I’ve only moved around for about an hour and a half.

It’s a new year and time to hit the ground running. One goal for 2011 is to have and do more guest blogs. I plan to feature other erotic romance authors on my blog as well as do some guest blogging of my own. So far, this is the schedule for January:

I always thought I was “organized.” My photos are in albums. My books are shelved. I have a system for keeping track of tax deductions so that doing my taxes is a snap. I never go grocery shopping without my list or my cloth grocery bags.

I thought I was organized because I spend a lot of time organizing my things. My closets, drawers, purse, shelves–get messy and I straighten them up. They get messy again and I organize again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

After reading Snoop: What your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling, I realize I’ve been deluding myself. I’m actually disorganized. A truly organized person wouldn’t need organize and reorganize his or her stuff because the stuff would never get messy to begin with.

While some of my cabinets are perfectly organized, others are catchalls. An organized person wouldn’t tolerate this hodgepodge.

Since I finished the book, I’ve identified my root problem as impatience. It’s not that I don’t know how to organize things or that I have too much stuff, I’m just too impatient to put things back where they belong immediately. Although I rarely lose things, I did lose my driver’s license once. I found it a year and a half later—in the dryer vent (not the lint trap, but the vent to the outside of the house)! I had obviously written a check at a store and put the license in my pocket because it was seconds quicker than putting it back in my wallet and I didn’t want to hold up the line. Although the license was the only “card” I’d ever lost, I can’t recall the number of times I’ve had to go through the laundry looking for the ATM or credit card I’d slipped into my pocket.

That stops now. My New Year’s resolution is to stop being so impatient and get organized.

I have a strategy. I am going to:

Take the time to put things away. I’ve already started doing this and I like the results so far. I know where everything is.

Start with individual drawers/closets etc. that are problem areas and tackle them one-by-one.

Evaluate my organizational systems. I’ve discovered already that sometimes the system doesn’t work. A case in point: my bathroom drawer. I used to have a tray to keep it neat, but things never seemed to return to their proper compartment. The problem was that some of the compartments were too small to be functional. I eliminated the tray and replaced it with some plastic baskets and voila! The drawer has stayed organized for several weeks now.

Despite my history of disorganization, I am disciplined (at least Snoop didn’t reveal that I’m not), so I think I have an excellent chance of achieving this.